[lbo-talk] Occupy Wall Street on 9/17/2011

[Carrol Cox]

This goes back to an old argument between Charles and me over whether or 
not the Theses on Feuerbach expressed a pragmatist epistemology -- for 
that is the epistemology Charles is appealing to here. "Practice makes 
perfect" may or may not be true in itself, but it can't ground an 
epistemology. The relevant epistemological perspective is to be found, 
for example, in Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition. Her perspective on 
actin is anti-pragmatist but does ground thought in action. She also 
makes very clear that grounding thought in action far from being a 
rejection oftheory is the very basis for understanding how crucial 
theory is to action. I won't try to develop this here, but the main 
weakness of the FHP paper on activism is that they themselves are 
anti-theory: that is, they are unable to grasp the nature (and 
necessity) of theory in political practice.

My first response to their paper was highly favorable since as a (loose) 
generalization their thesis is of the utmost importance. One of my 
endlessly frustrating experiences for 45 years has been precisely that 
of attempting (with only occasional success) to impress fellow activists 
with the importance of theory. But FHP fail to see the importance of 
meta-theory, of theorizing theory, and thus fall into the error of 
worshiping their own spontaneity. (Ollman's chapter on ethical values in 
_Alienation_ is of some importance here. Also Ian's posts on error 
theory.) I'll try to revise and expand this in later posts.

Carrol

On 9/15/2011 12:30 PM, Ferenc Molnar wrote:
>
> CB wrote: "...to paraphrase Marx or probably Carrol Cox, one actual action is worth a thousand perfect theoretical programs. They will learn from their mistakes. Practice will correct their theory."
>
> FM: I'd like to echo what someone wrote on this list, perhaps Mr. Henwood, that activists tend to get burned out on constant action and not only need but want theory to reset and redirect their work. I appreciate the placement of practice over theory on this list. Yet practice over theory or even a dialectic between the two is also theory. No activist group or radical organization, in the name of action, does itself any favors by erecting barriers against new theoretical debates or worse objective facts that challenge their ideological foundations. You would think that a happy medium would be a communication between theory and practice but in my experience, and this is very subjective, the theorists I've encountered who have worked in tandem with activists in developing their work were good as sociologists and historians but not much else. Far more helpful and challenging were the theorists who worked on their ideas in a sphere of their own where theory took precedence ove
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>   action. In any event, good luck to Wall Street occupiers on Saturday. 		 	   		
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